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I know Standard readers follow politics closely almost by definition, but for those who don't here's Colin James' observations on the year ahead for Labour, and for Phil Goff (Press, 30 Jan '10). He asks: Phil Goff cooks sausages to a turn on the barbecue.…
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John Key has told us that his government's unrelenting focus this year will be the economy. He has also said his government will focus unrelentingly on education. Already, it has relented to focus on increasing the maximum penalty for animal cruelty from three years to…
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Fran O'Sullivan wrote about how she was called by David Farrar's Curia, National's polling company, recently. What she was asked is revealing. She was asked to rate the National front bench plus Steven Joyce and Murray McCully. I've never heard of this been done before,…
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From where I'm sitting the Left will never be back in power, not because they will never win elections, but because the power game is over. The nation state as we know it is being slowly dismembered before our eyes, the leviathan of globalisation has…
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A bit of weekend trivia. On the 12th September 2008 we did a post about rocky and her google-bomb on John Key. This resulted in the amusement of almost everyone apart from some rather humourless wingnuts, and some technically illiterate political media who tried to…
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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I've been talking with some people about when John Key will call the next election. Two common points emerge: 1) it will be after the 2011 Budget. A government doesn't risk the right to lay down a budget lightly. It won't want to be campaigning…
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His formula appears to have been faithfully replicated here. Our only significant divergence is the recent inclusion of a live cross to the news site webmaster who gleefully fills us in on 'what's hot' on their site right now - often a heady mix of…
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have decided to remove…
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I suspect more than one reader of the Standard would have been glued to the live stream yesterday of Obama's state of the nation speech. If you're interested in reactions there's a useful summary over at the Huffington post, which appears mixed. But what I…
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Ok, I promised a review of the comments in 2009. Here are the usual suspects with both the number of comments and the number of bytes in the comments so you can see who talks a lot and how much. This was a little tricky…
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The first half of an excellent piece by Kent Dunston of Save the Basin (which is opposing the construction of flyovers around the Basin Reserve by National): Back in the halcyon days of the Muldoon administration circa 1979 the then-National government embarked on a series…
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In his speech yesterday Phil Goff articulated Labour's position on tax in no uncertain terms and came out very strongly against wealthy tax dodgers : "Too many people on good incomes avoid and evade paying taxes. It's not right that some top earners pay a lower…
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Check out this exchange between Trevor Mallard and Metiria Turei on his Facebook page (great how the new media allows these spur of the moment debates): Trevor Mallard: 25c/hour. $10 week for 40 hours then minus tax, extra acc, ets charges. Not fair John Key.…
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One of the great pleasures I get from writing for The Standard is making the trolls scream. There's no better sign that you're on the right track than when you sit down and think through a post, do the research and try to put forward…
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So Jeanette Fitzsimons is, as expected, resigning from Parliament. After 13 years her last day will be February 11th. Parliament will miss her energy, her honesty, her sanity, and her clear strong voice on Green issues. It is a huge loss, but no one deserves…
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Goff and his advisers knew that the wage cap on public service CEOs would be the headline grabber of his widely praised speech. It succeeded beautifully and has drawn greater attention to the rest of his message. It also maneuvered National into the position of…
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On Friday at 7 p.m the server is getting kernel upgrades and other maintenance upgrades. They reckon that it will take 10-15 minutes. In the past this has taken from 5 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the disk state. Be warned and don't get…
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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BLiP has summarized in a comment the current governments 'achievements' in support of the marketing NZ tourism. The John Key led National Ltd® government lands yet another axe blow on our 100% Pure brand by cancelling a scheme recognised internationally as a best practice model.…
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Phil Goff has just delivered his first major speech of the year to state what Labour stands for and where it is going. I have to say, I'm impressed. You really should read it. It sets out a clear agenda for Labour and that agenda…
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The first Auckland Drinking Liberally of 2010 takes place NEXT TUESDAY upstairs at The Purple Bar @ The Naval and Family and features new Labour MP Kelvin Davis (and we're hoping to get Maori Party leader Pita Sharples) to talk about the Treaty of Waitangi…
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Colin Espiner's back with his first blog of the year. It's so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes up with four suggestions for government action in the year ahead. Since the government doesn't seem to have any other ideas, let's…
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Phil Twyford has been organizing a series of meetings about the impending Auckland super-city 3rd bill. The date for submissions to the select committee closes on Feb 12. Write a submission and maybe go to Wellington and give Rodney hell - that is if he…
auckland supercity community democracy democracy under attack
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If Telecom were an SOE there would be cries to privatise it. These repeated crashes of XT simply aren't good enough. Just the latest in a litany of failures since it was sold. Fact is, we should haven't sold Telecom in the first place. Just needed…
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Steven Joyce has announced plans for a motorway from Puhoi to Wellsford at a cost of $2 billion ($1.4 billion in today's money). The route is used by just 15,000 cars a day (and that has been falling the last few years) and is estimated…
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Topics of interest, announcements, general discussion. The usual rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike...
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We've had a few posts about the lack of action from the government - but over on Bernard Hickey's blog he's spotted progess being made on the topic of outsourcing: Treasury and the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) said they had asked outside companies to…